
For years, the superstar rapper and his mentor formed one of hip-hop’s most inseparable teams. Then it all went terribly wrong.
Scribblings, musings and assorted published wisdom

For years, the superstar rapper and his mentor formed one of hip-hop’s most inseparable teams. Then it all went terribly wrong.

One grand old house overlooking the Sunset Strip played host to a generation of comics — including Sam Kinison, Andrew Dice Clay, and Robin Williams — launching dozens of careers and about as many drug problems. The crash pad of a comedy revolution, remembered, kinda, by the people who survived it.

In 2011, at age 23, Ramy Essam, Egypt’s “singer for the revolution” was lionized for helping to overthrow a dictator. Four years later, a brutal military crackdown has all but destroyed the country’s youthful protest movement while its hero bides his time in a faraway country, trying to keep the fight — and himself — alive.

Shows like Dual Survival and Naked and Afraid have helped make real-life survival one of the TV’s hottest genres. But when participants get pushed to endure ever more dangerous situations, how far is too far?

Here’s a link to me talking about the Bianca Lozano story on Headline News. If I had known I’d be standing–er, slouching– for this segment, I might have thought about what to do with my hands besides shoving them in my pockets as if I was standing around waiting for a bus. But I’m new to this.
As if losing a child to kidnapping wasn’t horrifying enough, ineffective law enforcement agencies and predatory private investigators only add to the confusion and pain. Deana Hebert’s long, maddening search for her daughter — and the ex-husband who took her — may be the rule, not the exception.

How a ‘Downton Abbey’-obsessed duo went from podcast obscurity to broadcast TV

From Masters of Sex to Boardwalk Empire: How Accurate are Fact-Based Dramas?